


A Time and Place for Us

by Ghostinthehouse



Series: Ficlet Omens [5]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 6000 years of Long Distance Relationship, Aromantic, Asexual Relationship, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Long-Distance Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-28 06:59:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19807087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghostinthehouse/pseuds/Ghostinthehouse
Summary: Angels can sense love. Demons can sense lies. 6000 years of a friendship deeper even than love gives them an ineffable code of their own. Because they know. They have always known. And yet 6000 year old habits are hard to lose.





	A Time and Place for Us

**Author's Note:**

> There's a time for us  
> Some day a time for us  
> Time together with time to spare  
> Time to learn, time to care 
> 
> \--Somewhere, West Side Story

Angels can sense love. Demons can sense lies. 6000 years of a friendship deeper even than love gives them an ineffable code of their own. Because they know. They have always known. And yet 6000 year old habits are hard to lose.

The words fall out of his mouth before he can stop them. Words he's spoken so many times over the millenia, and he knows Crowley can read the real meaning in the lie. "I don't think my side would like that." (I want to, he means. I'm just scared)

He can feel Crowley sending back the truth. (I love you. I love you. I'll always be here for you.) "You don't have a side any more," he says, and the tenderness Aziraphale has always felt from him is now in his voice, not just his heart. "Neither of us do."

Lies are bad and love is good, and they've always been the wrong way round. (It'd be funny if we both got it wrong. If you did the bad thing and I did the good one.)

It takes all his courage to sit beside Crowley on the bus instead of with a seat back between them. There's nothing left to hide, nowhere left to go, and he feels as vulnerable as Crowley looks when he doesn't have dark glasses to hide behind.

6000 years of tiny notes*, of snatched moments, of cups touching in lieu of hands. 6000 years of waiting for either head office to catch on that they are having a clandestine relationship, and knowing with all too painful clarity what the punishment is if they are caught. All of it burned away with the Bentley and the bookshop.

I can't bear to lose you. (here's some holy water)

I can't bear to lose you. (come away with me.)

I can't.

_I can't._

Crowley's head turns towards him, sluggish with exhaustion, all the hollows of his long bony face dusted with shadows that Aziraphale can't see through. "Aziraphale," he murmurs, and the name is a rare verbal caress laced with desperate vulnerability of his own. "Would you... hold me?"

Aziraphale blinks slowly at the request, his own weariness dragging him down, and Crowley's face begins to crumple. It isn't a look that Aziraphale can resist, anymore than Crowley ever resists his own puppy pout. He lifts an arm this time, not a wing, and lets his beloved lean into the shelter of it. "I thought you didn't like being touched."

Crowley's head comes to rest on his shoulder, and a long held breath whispers through parted lips, somewhere between a hiss and a sigh. "When everyone treats you like your touch contaminates them, you learn to stop reaching out." He radiates a quiet love, built of company and conversations, drifting into sleep and Aziraphale lets his own face soften into honesty in response.

The bus rocks them onward, giving them both a lift to the only place either wants to go.

Home.

*Scraps of message sent by whatever method is most hidden (pigeons sometimes, or tucked into books, or miraculously turning up in pockets):

I have to go to Babylon.

I have to go to Ur. 

I miss you. Come back soon.

I have to go to Jerusalem.

Me too. I'll see you there.

Come to Rome, we can run into each other by "accident".

I found a restaurant you'd like.

I found a wine you'd like.

I thought of you...

I thought of you...


End file.
